


Ancora

by fudgernutter



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Death, F/F, F/M, M/M, Multi, Other, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Temporary Character Death
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-05-03
Updated: 2017-07-24
Packaged: 2018-10-27 04:44:35
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,819
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10801998
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fudgernutter/pseuds/fudgernutter
Summary: Slowly, you bring a hand up to your face and notice it’s flowers. And not just any flowers, the wild buttercups that grow all over the mountainside. You had managed to do a face-plant of epic proportions into a bed of buttercups. You huff, sending the flowers swaying around your face before closing your eyes again.It takes a while, but even slower then before, you roll yourself to your back. Just that much winds you and you end up panting from the effort. As you try to catch your breath you open your eyes and squint, blinking up at the perfect circle of light above you.Then it hits you.Dear God. Had you really fallen that far?___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________A spiritual revamp of my old story And Again. Will update at least once a week.





	1. Praefatio

Rigor mortis, according to Wikipedia, is the most noticeable symptom of death, recognized by the dead body stiffening due to chemical reactions in the muscles. Uncanny Valley is the state where something looks human-like but not fully causing the viewer of the object to feel unease while looking at it. 

This is what you think of as you watch the corpse of what used to be your uncle be escorted out of the house around your Mom and Aunt. It’s covered by the cheap black plastic body bag, but you know the body is in there. You have, unfortunately already seen it, when you ran to help your Aunt Deb when you heard her terrified pleas for help. 

That’s just how you work you suppose. You’re Mom always said that you were the calm one. Composed and logical. But really, you were an overly anxious wreck. Maybe even worse than the rest of your family. You just knew how to compartmentalize stuff like this. And right now you feel… numb. Despondent. 

The local Hospice Center, an hour at best, had driven as fast as possible to your Aunt’s isolated mountain home in the Appalachians when they had received the call your ailing Uncle had passed away. The local coroner, who luckily lived another 40 minutes away from that, had already been up driving south to visit family and so dropped by to sign off on the papers as the Funeral Home, which was just down the road, came to pick up the corpse.

You can’t help but to stay far away from the whole scene. Even as the funeral director talks to your Aunt Deb and Mom in soothing tones, you still catch the distinct waft of over-ripe fruit come from the Master bedroom. It’s the smell of death. The nurse from Hospice had told you when you had fought the urge to vomit when you had caught a whiff of it earlier as they tried to remove your hysterical Aunt from the scene so they could take care of what was left of your Uncle.

To be fair, your poor Uncle had been in a losing battle with the Grim Reaper for a long time. He had Stage 3 Lung Cancer from smoking way too much in younger years and it had been caught too late to even do anything about it. In fact, if someone would have met him for the first time yesterday they would have never believed that just a simple month ago he was fifty pounds heavier and working full-time as a plumber. 

Your Mom’s watery eyes search the small farm house, looking from Coroner to Funeral Director to the drivers, before peering over her shoulder to look at you. Whatever she sees there she must not like, because she shoots you a tight lipped but reassuring smile. 

You’re Mom was probably one of the few people who knew how you were really feeling right now. She knows you don’t do death. Not well at least.

Bones and even Mummies are fine. You can even handle taxidermy. But actual corpses? You would rather die yourself then be around one. Lifeless eyes, pale, cold skin. Regardless of what biology dictates, there was something weirdly inhuman about the husks of people who have passed away. It’s that Uncanny Valley aspect that gets you everytime. You try your best to smile back but you still take a step back and curl into yourself a bit more.

“Oh sweetheart,” your Mom coos, disengaging from Aunt Deb and reaching out with an arm for you. Her touch his warm and comforting and it eases some of the tension from your body immediately. You tuck your face into her shoulder as she wraps you up in a hug. “It’s okay. It’s only a body. It’s not going to hurt you.”

You frown and blink away tears, emotionally and mentally drained. You respond back with in a whisper, “I can’t help it. Fears don’t work that way.”

“I know. I’m sorry, I’m just trying to help,” she murmurs back, running a hand across your shoulders in soothing motions. She pulls away slightly, “Why don’t you go to the room and play some games or something while we finish up here? I can fill you in later tonight, okay?”

You nod into her shoulder and whisper a quick thank you. She gives your back one last pat before disengaging and returning to your Aunt Deb, allowing you to slip away to the spare room you’ve been staying in. There you slip on your boots, hastily tying the laces before pulling on your old, worn-in striped hoodie and grabbing your messenger bag. 

From there you peer out into the hallway, hearing the contact clatter still coming from the entryway, you silently make your way to the kitchen. There, you quickly grab some snacks and a couple bottles of water to stuff in your bag before booking it out the screen door and into the forest around the house.

You don’t make it very far before you lose your composure. Your vision blurry with tears as your stomp down trails you’ve long since memorized. It’s too much for you, so regardless of how hard you were sobbing, you keep putting as much distance between the old farmhouse that had been passed down from generation to generation through your family.

Then eventually, when you can no longer see the house or even hear the voices, you find an overturned tree and cry and cry. And then when you’re done crying? You just sob, confused and anxious until you can’t even do that anymore. Then you just sit, whimpering and wheezing while the world slowly turns on around you.

You’re not sure how long you’re there, you just know that you are there for quite a while. You only finally stir when you feel the first wisps of hunger eat at you after your breakdown. Finally you pull out one of the bottles of water and fish out one of the snacks you stole from the kitchen, which so happens to be a package of pop-tarts. It’s not the most healthy thing, but hey, it was tasty and it kept you away from the house for now.

You slowly eat and drink, watching as nature just exists around you. A wild rabbits skitters across from you, as well as a few squirrels in the time it takes you to finish your breakfast. Then, once you’re down to crumbs, some kind of bright songbird flitters down to sit at the other end of the tree. You have just enough time before it notices your presence to snap a quick pic before it flies off. The tranquility of the world just being calm your anxieties more than you can believe.

You snap a couple more pics of the tree, the forest, whatever catches your fancy and you finally start moving again. You wander along for a while when you notice an old trail to your far left. It’s a peculiar thing, because with all your trips through the woods around this old house you’ve never noticed it before. You make your way through the the fallen trees and ivy and notice that the trail seemed like old stone steps that led through the bush. Although you knew that you should be getting back to the house soon, you couldn’t help but be tad bit curious. This place, the woods and mountain surrounding the house, was known as Mount Ebbott. Although most people thought it was cursed or even haunted, that truth was like all other heavily forested and rocky mountain areas, had seen its fair share of casualties, so cautiously you made your way down the crumbling stone stairs.

You follow them for a while, and just when you had thoughts of turning back around, they stopped. There were a few large boulders that look like they might have been moved here from other places, but other than it it was a completely normal expanse of land. In fact it was kind of disappointing to be completely honest. With a frown, you took the last step down, only to feel the ground give out from underneath you.

Time seemed to slow down. Your body twisted as a scream bubbled to your lips and you scrambled to grab something, anything, to stop you from your descent. A root, a piece of shale, but both easily gave way to your weight.

“Help! Someone! Mom! Aunt Deb! _Please!_ ” 

But nobody came.


	2. Submerso

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> All the sudden you can’t move, like an invisible box has trapped you in place. The lights ring around you and slowly move in. The freaking flower is maniacally laughing, it’s mouth opened so wide it splits his face in two. 
> 
> Everything seems to slow down in that moment. You’re stuck. Stranded. You are going to die down here it seems, one way or another. Even after you survived that fall and tried so hard... You close your eyes and pray to whatever deity exists that it’s fast and painless.

Waking up feels a lot like the first breath of air after being underwater for a long time. Your whole body feels like it is on fire and your brain works sluggishly as you struggle to understand what has happened to you. There is light filtering down upon you and it’s terribly bright even though your eyes are shut and you're currently face down on something softer than dirt.

Slowly, you open your eyes and bring a hand up to your face. Grasped in your fist is a flower. In fact, they’re all around you. And not just any flowers, they’re the wild buttercups that grow all over the mountainside. You had somehow managed to do a face-plant of epic proportions into a bed of buttercups. You huff, sending the flowers swaying around your face before closing your eyes again.

It takes a while, but even slower then before, you roll yourself to your back. Just that much winds you and you end up panting from the effort. As you try to catch your breath you open your eyes and squint, blinking up at the perfect circle of light above you.

Then it hits you.

Dear God. Had you really fallen that far?

You feel panic envelope you, and you struggle to right yourself. Your hands are scraped up and ache when you place your weight against them, but nothing prepares you for the pain that ripples through your ribs when you try to sit up. The whole experience leaves you even more breathless than before but you still fight through the pain and manage, flopping over yourself haphazardly when your ribs ache too much to keep you straight.

A warm drop of something rolls down your face and it distracts you momentarily from the pain. You wipe at it with your hand only to realize that it’s blood, your blood, and your breath hitches in your throat. Your vision becomes tilted and it’s only then do you realize that you’ve been holding your breath. 

You recognize the signs. It’s a panic attack. Something you definitely don’t need right now. So you pull your aching knees up to your chest and brace your head between them, counting your breaths slowly in and out.

Eventually the tightness in your chest eases and the lightheadedness fades away. 

You then take stock of the situation. Messenger bag? A little beat up but located a few feet away. Most of the contents are flung about unfortunately, but from what you can tell everything look intact. You make your way over, slowly turning to your knees and crawling. You don’t even bother standing with how your leg twinges when you move it.

When you get there, you don’t even bother sweeping everything up, instead making even more of a mess by shuffling through the rest of the contents to find your phone. It’s located at the bottom, a crack on the screen but otherwise fine. 

The relief you feel is immediate and overwhelming, tears forcing themselves to your eyes before you can even think to stop them. With shaky hands you unlock it, and press the button to speed-dial your Mom.

It rings a few times before your hear the chirp of the call being dropped. You look at your phone. It says it has signal so you shuffle back into the center of the circle of light to try again. Once again the phone rings as it tried to connect before dropping. 

“No, c’mon you stupid thing,” you hiss as you try again and again. Each time the phone beeping as it alerts you that the call could not be completed. A strangled cry escapes you as realization hits you, fear gripping your chest and a cold feeling settling into the pit of your stomach.

No one knows where you are. You might be alive now but for how long? You frantically look around, sweeping up your scattered items. You have about a bottle and a half of water, two granola bars and a bag of oreos. There might be some lose mints in your bag, but there isn’t much more than can sustain you than that. You’re hyper aware of the dirt in your nails as your begin to hyperventilate. You clutch your chest as you stare at the phone. it says there are 3 bars but you can’t get through to your Mom to the police, to anyone, to track you down. What are you going to do?

You can’t help but to whine as you curl in on yourself in distress. The pain aggravates your injuries and that becomes a focus point as you ride out the anxiety. By the end of it you’re just staring limp and listless at a buttercup a couple inches from your face, tracing the bright yellow edge with your eye.

You’re so tired. It’s be so easy to just lay here and give up. Especially after everything today has thrown at you. But you won’t give up. You’re too stubborn for that. 

You think of your Mom waiting for back at the house and take a deep breath. 

“Okay. Think about this you idiot.” You tell yourself. Hearing your voice in the room is grounding. You take a moment to actual look around yourself. It’s natural rock, but it looks to be carved out slightly. To the left of you is a tunnel. You don’t know where it goes, but it’s better than sitting in the flowerbed crying. 

You slowly crawl back over to your bag, and sweep all of pack all of your stuff back into it. Then you have to tackle the challenge of actually standing. It takes you a while because now, not only do you have to deal with the emotional tax, your physical injuries leave you panting for breath. The worst of it is your leg which twinges every time you try to put weight on it. You breath slowly, and put one foot in front of the other. You’re moving which is a big accomplishment. It’s more like a shuffle, but you are finally going forward, making progress.

As you finally make your way into the tunnel, you realize that the it is actually getting bigger and the rock of the walls starts to look more angular. You notice that the walls are actually made out of some square cut stone stacked perfectly like brick, weathered only by age. The thought occurs to you that if this place is man made, that means there might be a way out. That thought makes makes hope blossom in your chest and you try your best to pick up your pace a little. 

It feels like eternity, but you eventually come to another wide area. It looks much like the tunnel previously, with the stone-work on the walls and moss on the ground, but the thing that catches your eye is another tunnel across the space that seems to be glowing. The grip panic has on your chest loosens, and you start moving towards the light. You’re halfway through the room when a flower quite literally pops up in front of you.

It’s almost as tall as you are and the head of it was as big as a dinner plate. It turns and looks at you? You gape at it. 

It has a face. It’s smiling.

“Howdy!” It chirps, voice child-like and annoyingly bright. “I’m Flowey the Flower! Nice to meet ‘cha!”

You cannot speak. You think you might have hit your head harder than you believed, but no, this flower is talking to you like it’s an everyday occurrence. A part of you think that you are way too emotionally and physically exhausted to be dealing with whatever is happening right here. You must be hallucinating or, worse case scenerio, you didn’t make it out of that flower patch and are having some kind of weird out of body experience as you die.

“You’re new to the Underground, aren’tcha? Golly, you must be so confused. Someone ought to teach you how things work around here! I guess little old me will have to do. Ready? Here we go!”

Nope. No way. You were not ready. The only thing you knew of Monsters is that all the old folklore said that they were cruel and terrible things. But that’s it. They were just folklore. Myths and fairytales. They don’t fit into the sane, logical world of rules and definitions that you’ve built up for yourself. 

You consider turning around back to the room full of flowers just because on top of everything else that’s been happening, this might be the final straw. Yet, just as the thought to flee comes, a bizarre sense of vertigo overtakes you. It feels almost like wind is whooshing past your ears even though you are standing still and a you feel a tugging sensation located in your chest. Looking down, you notice a red glowing light emanating from the center of your it. You pull at your hoodie and look down at your chest; right where your heart would be floats out a lighted equivalent. It’s not anatomically correct or anything, more like a paper cut-out. But it’s there, and it moves with you when you sway. You stare blankly from it to the flower.

“See that heart? That is your soul! The very culmination of your being! Your soul starts of weak, but it can grow strong by gaining a lot of LV. LV stand for love of course! You want some love don’t cha? Well here I’ll share some with you!” The flower winks at you. Can this get any more bizarre?

Suddenly what looks like fairy-lights spark up behind the creature. “Down here love is shared through… little.... friendliness pellets.”

Regardless of the insanity that is currently surrounding you, you can’t help but to think that the statements sounds incredibly fake. Then, as if you weren’t just staring open mouthed at it like blithering idiot the whole time, the flower continues on with it’s monologue.

“Are you ready? Move around and grab as many as you can!”

The lights are slow, but they move faster the closer they get to you. Your instinct tells you to move and, honestly not trusting a giant talking flower, you listen to them. You make your aching body dodge them, easily slipping out between two of the pellets before they can touch you. You look towards the flower and realize it’s looking at you with a dark expression. You’re not sure, but you think it’s disgust?

“Hey buddy, you missed them,” it’s voice is dramatically lower than before. “Lets try again, okay?” Another round of fairy-lights floats toward you. You immediately dodge again. 

“Is this a joke?” Flowey starts again, glaring at you. “Are you braindead? Run. Into. THE. BULLETS!”

Flowey’s face freezes. It knows it messed up, and part of you is smug knowing that you were right to dodge the stupid lights. The other part of you, the sensible and overtaxed part, switches into overdrive when he shoots another round at you. They’re faster this time but you still manage to hit the deck, jostling your aching body and they buzz right past you. Looking back to the flower you see that its face has changed into something demonic. Black eyes with pinpricks of light with a grin that shows rows of sharp teeth. This is it, you are going to die at the hands of a possessed fucking flower. You tense up, you don’t know how much more of this you can handle.

“You know what’s going on here don’t you? You just wanted to see me suffer.”

All the sudden you can’t move, like an invisible box has trapped you in place. The lights ring around you and slowly move in. The freaking flower is maniacally laughing, it’s mouth opened so wide it splits his face in two. 

Everything seems to slow down in that moment. You’re stuck. Stranded. You are going to die down here it seems, one way or another. Even after you survived that fall and tried so hard... You close your eyes and pray to whatever deity exists that it’s fast and painless. Yet suddenly you feel a flash of warmth move across the room, and when you open your eyes you find that Flowey has literally be knocked out of the ground and crawled away, the bullets that had surrounded you now gone.

The red glowing heart disappears in the same breath and you instantly cover your chest with your hands, trying to protect when Flowey had called your soul. You hear loud footsteps rapidly approaching, making your heart race once more. When you see what is making them you can’t help but oogle.

“What a terrible creature!” It’s a bipedal goat.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm a little late, but this chapter is super long so I hope that makes up for it :)


	3. Angocia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know she is saying something to you, but you honestly can't hear it over the pounding of your own heart. Each movement of her mouth shows you a glance of teeth that are neither goat or human in nature, and your instinct tells you to run. To fight. To do something other than to stare at this- this monster before you. Flowey was your size and you had issues with it, but this new terror towers greatly over that and she threw that weed to the side like paper in the wind.
> 
> You are hyper-focused on each movement she takes, a quirk of her very humanesque brows to the dip of her mouth. She lowers herself, coming closer to you slowly and you squeal, pain rippling through you as you try to backpedal away from her.
> 
> “-don't hurt me please, God don't hurt me. I'll do whatever you want just don't kill me, please just don't hurt me please, please,” you find yourself mumbling uncontrollably as you curl up into yourself.

It's like every nightmare you didn't know you had rolled into one. 

Her face is decidedly caprine with oval irises resting in brick-red eyes and two horns on the cusp of her crown, so thick at the base that you imagine that she must grind them short or else they would be much longer. Her long ears curl downwards, which only draws your attention to her mouth. It curls upwards in a smile that anthropomorphizes her into something decidedly much more human-like. In turn it causes the already overtaxed brain promptly shuts down. 

You know she is saying something to you, but you honestly can't hear it over the pounding of your own heart. Each movement of her mouth shows you a glance of teeth that are neither goat or human in nature, and your instinct tells you to run. To fight. To do something other than to stare at this- this monster before you. Flowey was your size and you had issues with it, but this new terror towers greatly over that and she threw that weed to the side like paper in the wind.

You are hyper-focused on each movement she takes, a quirk of her very humanesque brows to the dip of her mouth. She lowers herself, coming closer to you slowly and you squeal, pain rippling through you as you try to backpedal away from her.

“-don't hurt me please, God don't hurt me. I'll do whatever you want just don't kill me, please just don't hurt me please, please,” you find yourself mumbling uncontrollably as you curl up into yourself.

You feel her arm touch your leg, and although her grip is gentle, she touches some very injured part of you because pain ripples through you so fast and so hard it takes your breath away. Black spots encroach the edges of your vision and you squeeze your eyes shut.

You don't want to see what happens next.

And you don't.

When you open your eyes next, it's to a cute but sparsely furnished room you’ve never seen before but seeing as you are so emotionally taxed from everything this doesn’t seem to concern you. In fact, as you move to get up, you are surprised to find that all of your aches and pains from earlier are totally gone. You easily slip from the bed with no troubles, almost as if your earlier confrontation with Flowey never happened. As you slowly wander around you notice a chest of toys and a dresser full of clothing in all different sizes. When you reach inside to inspect them further, a thick layer of dust causes you to go into a sneezing fit. The sounds of you sneezing and coughing away must alert the inhabitants of the house you staying in, because you hear a soft, matronly voice from behind the door. 

“Hello? I hear you sneezing in there, are you alright?” The door handle twists and you panic, grabbing the first object around you, a stray stick placed amongst the toys, to defend yourself. The door opens to reveal the goat monster from earlier, and you instantly freeze, all thoughts of fighting leaving your head.

“Shhh. It is alright. Do not be afraid my child,” She coos, hands help up in a placating manner. You’re a thrown off by the term of endearment, but maybe since you were so little compared to her you could only assume she had mistaken you for a kid. “I am Toriel, caretaker of the Ruins.”

You make no movement to acknowledge her, adrenaline running through your veins and locking your muscles like a vice. She smiles in a way that you can only describe as motherly, and kneels before you, making no attempt to get closer but blocking the door anyway. You see her eye the stick in your hands warily, and some part of you laughs slightly. Like the quarter-inch-thick twig could do any damage to the imposing creature in front of you.

“How are you feeling, my child? You were hurt very badly when I found you. Is there any lingering pain that I missed when I healed you?”

You shake your head slowly, confused. Healed you? Is that why you were no longer in so much pain? You didn't understand what she means.

“Oh my child, I pass through the place I found you everyday to see if anyone has fallen down. You are the first human to come here in a long time,” she says in a slow and even manner. “Before, when children fell, they were much less hurt than you were. I suppose the preventative spell I put there to slow anyone who might fall might need to be strengthened.”

She places a furry hand to her equally furry chin in contemplation. You watch her hand with rapt interest, noticing how each thick digit ends in a pointed claw. After a moment, she gives you another motherly smile.

“Either way my child, I am glad you are okay. I prepared a surprise for you,” she trips over the last word, as she takes another glance at the stick at your hand. She soldiers on though, dropping her arms to show she means no harm, “I want you to enjoy your time here.”

She reaches out a hand to you, “Why don’t you place the stick down, my child? I promise that I will not let any harm befall you.”

You hesitate. This woman, although large and terrifying, has rescued you and somehow healed you from all the injuries you had acquired earlier. She seems very nice, but Flowey seemed nice at first too. You lick your lips, suddenly hungry as something delicious smelling wafts through the open door and then tighten your grip on the stick, wary and unsure.

“I’ll come out if I can keep the stick,” you reply, sounding like a petulant child.

“Alright my child, if that makes you feel safer. But please, do not hit anyone with it,” she returns, gracefully standing up and waiting for your nod of confirmation. She then walks out the door, motioning for you to follow her into a hallway and into a spacious living area. Everything in it, from the rocking chair next to the fireplace, to the large table she steers you to are scaled to Toriel’s height. It makes you feel like you’re in some kind of funhouse as you crawl up into the chair she pulls out for you. Placed in the table’s center is a pie. It smells absolutely delicious to you and your stomach gurgles at the sight of it.

“I thought I would make a pie to celebrate your arrival,” Toriel states, cutting a large portion and placing it on the plate in front of you. “It is cinnamon-butterscotch, so I do hope you like it.”

You carefully place the stick on your lap and grab the fork to your right. A tentative bite proves that it is as delicious as it smells, the crust is buttery and flakey and the filing creamy and sweet. It warms you up the inside out and feels remarkably like home. You take another bite and another. Each makes your chest ache with a bittersweet emotion you can’t place, but you’re so hungry and it tastes so good. You’re about halfway through your pie when you finally have to stop. 

You are crying so hard you can’t even hold the fork anymore, but the weirdest part is you don’t even remember starting.

“Oh my child,” you hear Toriel murmur from next to you, her voice doleful. You hear rather than see the plate in front of you being moved, the slight scraping of porcelain on wood noticeable over your sobbing. She picks you up, much like a mother does to a small child and proceeds to hold you as you cry. “Perhaps that is enough for now.”

You cling to her and cry until you can’t anymore. Then once that is done, she takes you back to the small room you woke up in and tucks you into the dusty bed, brushing the hair away from your tear-soaked face before leaving you to sleep a dark, dreamless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Short chapter but I liked where it ended.
> 
> Also here's a pic of our good friend tori I drew :)  
> 


	4. INCUBO

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> To be honest with you mu child, under normal circumstances I would dissagree with you but as of late things have been very voletile here… How much do you know about Monsters?”
> 
> “Honestly? Until today, I thought Monsters were just myths. Fairy-tales.”
> 
> “What about the war?” She looks confused and concerned. “The war between Humans and Monsters?”
> 
> “I didn’t even know there was a war. I don’t think anyone topside does,” you respond, voice soft, shaking your head.

Dark, darker yet darker. You fall even deeper into the nightmare that unfolds around you.

There is no ceiling, but there is no floor either. Instead there are just walls and walls that seem to go on forever, each inch covered in vines and golden flowers. As you continue your descent into the abyss, you being to notice something strange... Each flower has a face, similar enough to look like Flowey, but each taunts you as you pass by, some touching you with their leaves while some just mock you. Their voices string together until it becomes like a drone, edging on your nerves. 

Even when you cover your ears you still hear the noise and all you want is it to end. To stop these stupid. Irritating. Damn annoying flowers!

One latches onto your arm, and without the padding of your hands to dim the sound you go crazy, lashing out at the flower. You feel your hand know into it, and then through it, and almost instantly the sound stops.

You turn around and in front of you is an ash pile… Toriel’s ash pile. You can see her robes clearly through the large amount of dust.

“What? No. I… I didn’t...” 

You look at your hands, in it they clutch the stick you had carried with you earlier for protection, only this time the end is sharpened down into a point.

“No.”

You try to throw the stick, drop it, anything, but it seems to be glued to your hands. Suddenly the chanting of the flowers restarts in a large raging cacophony. Louder and louder they cry, “kill or be killed”. 

“No!”

And then, the feeling as if being trapped in an invisible box surrounds you once more. You watch in horror as slowly, oh so slowly, the empty space fills with the same fairy lights from your meeting with Flowey only this time they come in all shapes and sizes. 

You want to scream. You want to run. But you can’t do anything except shut your eyes tightly. 

 

Then you wake up. Each muscle is tense and adrenaline fills your vein, heart thudding painfully in your chest. You can still hear the shrill cries of the flowers in your ears before you realize that it’s actually you screaming. Soft, furry hands touch your hair startling you with their gentleness. You turn to stare wide and teary eyed at an exhausted looking Toriel. She is wearing large, circle, wire-frame glasses and an ostentatious but well-worn violet house coat over a some type of white night gown that you can see at her neck.

“Shh, shh my child. It is okay, I am here now and I will not let anyone harm you,” Toriel murmurs to you, as she shits on the edge of the bed. Her quiet consolation calms you and brings you back to reality. Slowly, as if not to scare you further, she wraps an arm around around your shoulders and pulls you against her side.

You are a fully grown adult, way past the age to be seeking comfort from a parent for a night terror, but you collapse into Toriel’s comfort and she continues to console you. WIth everything that’s happened lately, you decide to let her coddle you like the child she seems to think you are for just a bit longer. Toriel does her part and wraps her other arm around you, letting you rest your head on her hip while you calm down. Eventually you fall asleep, Toriel’s presence and soft humming easing you into a dreamless sleep.

 

When you wake up the next morning you feel strangely calm and at peace with the whole situation. Perhaps it’s due to the terrible nightmare you had earlier, or maybe it’s just you finally accepting your fate, waking up to Toriel’s motherly aura after the whole ordeal last night and crying your heart out for like the fifth time had been a little more than cathartic. That being said, your eyes ache in a way that crying too much can only do, your throat is dry and you feel like a shower would just make you feel a little bit more, well, human. So you stumble out of the bed and make the effort to find a bathroom.

After a moment of searching, you find what you’re looking for down the hall from the small room you slept in. There you relieve yourself and look at the shower. You figure Toriel wouldn’t mind and so you take moment to figure out the nozzles, strip and hop in. While you bathe, you take stock of your injuries, or lack-thereof. There is still some intense bruising, on the left side of your ribs, on your left leg from the knee down and some light one on your right hip. You suppose that, even with healing magic, not everything from you fall could be magicked away.

Then after you finish cleaning yourself up, you borrow a towel from under the counter and comb your fingers through your hair. As you examine your clothes from yesterday and see that other than a couple tears and patches of dirt, they are relatively intact. You briefly pause, wishing you had some deodorant before pulling on your old clothes.

As you walk down the hallway you catch the image of yourself in a large mirror you don’t remember passing in your haste to find the bathroom, but the sight you see out the corner of your eye makes you pause. You’re a bit paler than normal and your eyes are red with dark bags forming underneath. You can even see a small pink line at the top of your forehead where you must have hit your head on the way down. You just sigh at your reflection, the weight of reality heavy on your shoulders. No matter what has happened, it’s still you.

You follow the hallway out past an entryway back to the living area again and find Toriel is already up and reading, the glasses she wore last night adorning her face.When she sees you, she instantly shuts her book and stands, giving you a smile. She folds her hands in front of her and takes a small, hesitant step forward. “Good morning my child. How are you feeling?”

“Okay I guess,” you reply with a shrug, trying and failing to return her sweet smile. It must have been unsuccessful because her eyebrows quirk up in concern at your response. It’s not that you weren’t a morning person, it’s just that after everything that happened has you feeling sullen and groggy, the emotional and physical drain sombering you in a way you can’t hide

“Well,” Toriel says, punctuating her words with a clap of her hands. “I’m sure you’re hungry. Would you like some pie? Unless you did not like it…”

“No, pie would be great.”

“Great!” She smiles again at you before shuffling off to the kitchen. You take a brief look around before climbing into one of the wooden chairs at the dining table. Toriel brings you out a large slice of pie, a fork balanced on top, with a glass of milk. She sets the place and glass in front of you before sitting beside you, “I warmed it up for you a bit. I do think it tends to taste a bit better when it is that way.”

“Um.. Thanks. I don’t really mind one way or another,” you say awkwardly, grabbing the fork. You take a bite and it tastes just as good as it did last night, but now you can name the bittersweet emotion you felt last night- homesickness. It reminds you of home, of your Mom and the pies she made. Yet instead of making you cry again, it just makes you feel determined to get home.

In fact, now that your mind is a little bit more reasonable than it was yesterday, you can’t help but feel more than a little ashamed at how you acted. You feel at least a little justified because Monsters to most people, including you, had been a myth until you had seen Flowey. And all things considering, you could have been a lot worse after what Flowey put you through. Regardless, you know you have to apologize to Toriel. Especially since she was kind enough to take you in, heal you, and feed you.

In fact, she seemed pretty wise in that Mom-ish sort of way. You were sure that if you asked she would probably help you out. You chew the last few bites of pie slowly, milling through your thoughts.

“Sorry. For last yesterday I mean… And I guess last night,” you say after taking sip of milk. You tap your fingernails against the glass, “I’ll be honest, I wasn’t expecting to see, um, people down here.”

Toriel settles deeper into her chair, pulling off her glasses. The red eyes that you had found frightening yesterday are warm and kind. “It has been quite a long time since a human last fell down here, it must have been a jarring especially with that… creature that attacked you.”

 

“Yeah… It was. Who-what was that thing?” You ask, turning to look more fully. “He said his name was Flowey… is he a Monster too?”

“A Monster only in name. You aren’t the first thing I’ve saved from him. For some reason he is excetptionally violent,” She huffs angrily.

“Like a kid acting out?” You wonder aloud.

“Oh my, maybe. A child just throwing a tantrum,” She smiles conspiracily along with you, making you chuckle. After a pause she seems to consider the statement, “To be honest with you mu child, under normal circumstances I would dissagree with you but as of late things have been very voletile here… How much do you know about Monsters?”

“Honestly? Until today, I thought Monsters were just myths. Fairy-tales.”

“What about the war?” She looks confused and concerned. “The war between Humans and Monsters?”

“I didn’t even know there was a war. I don’t think anyone topside does,” you respond, voice soft, shaking your head.

“Oh… oh child…” She looks at you with tears in her eyes. You don’t understand why she looks so upset, but it makes you worry.

“What’s wrong?”

“Its… its just that, my child, You don’t even know and…” she takes a calming breath. She’s obviously upset about the situation. You murmur encouraging words to her… You don’t understand anything really, but if there is a phrase that you try to live by it’s, “Everything will be okay in the end.”

You apparently have said this outloud because Toriel looks at you with a watery smile. “Yes it will. I will tell you all I can.”

You spend the rest of the night learning about Monster history, culture, and about why the Monsters were down there in the first place. It’s a lot to take in, and you feel overwhelmed by it all. You go to sleep in your borrowed bed feeling like the world was on your shoulders. These people didn’t deserve to be down here and it was all the fault of your ancestors.

But as much as you want to help these poor people you also want to go home yourself. Wracked with guilt and indecisiveness you end tossing and turning before falling into a restless sleep.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm just really slow at writing :)

**Author's Note:**

> Hey guys! I'm finally getting into the swing of writing again! This is my intro chapter. This story will be a little darker then And Again so I do appologize. As always, I will tag anything that I thing is particularly triggering but please let me know in the comments if I need to add anything! Besides, more tags will definitely be added as the story progresses.
> 
> Additionally, I proof read this myself, so let me know if you find any mistakes and if you are open to being a Beta.
> 
> Also, as always, my tumblr is fudgernutter.tumblr.com
> 
> Thanks! <3


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